Live data from Hacker News

June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

servo.org

11–20 of 72 posts

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#11
post #3

Does anyone actually use Servo for anything?

Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.

I believe Ladybird is being ported to Rust as we speak.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#12

Does anyone actually use Servo for anything?

I played around with it as a replacement for embedded WebKit in a desktop app. It's getting there!

It's obviously not ready yet, but it's also not "infinitely far" anymore. I'm donating to them, because I think that they're the only realistic successor to the dying Firefox.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#13
post #8

Congrats on the new release. Anything that creates more competition in the browser space has my support. I was hyped about Ladybird but their recent adoption of LLMs and going source-available only has put a bit of a dent in it.

I think you mean that the Ladybird project doesn't accept outside contributions anymore but it's still open source (just checked it's under BSD 2-Clause License). Pretty important distinction I think.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#14
post #3

Does anyone actually use Servo for anything?

Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.

Up until ~2015 one of the world's most deployed browser engines was Sciter. A work of _one_ person. A fast embedded browser engine, a binary about 4Mb in size.

It was used to render the UI in apps like our favorite McAfee antivirus.

This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#16
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.

I believe Ladybird is being ported to Rust as we speak.

Nah, just individual components where memory haters

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#17
post #8

Congrats on the new release. Anything that creates more competition in the browser space has my support. I was hyped about Ladybird but their recent adoption of LLMs and going source-available only has put a bit of a dent in it.

It's just a pause until they get to their alpha deadline. Hard to do that when you can't quickly validate all the drive by llm contributions

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#18
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.

Writing a new browser engine at all is irresponsible and ridiculous. Doing it in anything other than Rust just makes it slightly more irresponsible than it already is.

I don't see how it is irresponsible or ridiculous. More browser engines is a good thing. It might be irresponsible to bet your company on it at this point, but on its own I think it is a worthy endeavor. Plus it looks like a lot of fun to work on! This is hacker news after all.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#19
post #14
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.

Up until ~2015 one of the world's most deployed browser engines was Sciter. A work of _one_ person. A fast embedded browser engine, a binary about 4Mb in size. It was used to render the UI in apps like our favorite McAfee antivirus. This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.

> This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.

I agree with you but throwing web standards out the window like Sciter is a non-starter. One of the benefits of Electron apps is still having the option to run it in your browser.

Re: June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more

#20
post #10

Does anyone actually use Servo for anything?

Maybe give them a second? Yes, it's usable for applications web views if you're willing to restrict yourself but for general purpose web browsing there's still a lot that needs doing (but work is progressing). Under Google's management, web tech has grown fast. And it's an ever shifting living standard. There is a lot for any alternative browser engine to implement, let alone keep pace with the changes.

Servo is 14 years old, it's hardly a new project. Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. The issue has always been Mozilla not being focused.
Post reply on HN